


There But For Fortune

by aleksrothis



Category: New Mutants (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hellions, Tarot, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27983211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aleksrothis/pseuds/aleksrothis
Summary: For the prompt:How do Marie-Ange's powers work? Can she animate any other images, or is it strictly her cards? It's kind of ambiguous whether she can see/sense the future with her cards, too... Does she collect different decks?
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	There But For Fortune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheliak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/gifts).



> I was thrilled when I saw your requests; the opportunity to write one of my favourite underused characters, and nerd about tarot decks at the same time! Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to the delightful Carabas for the beta-reading.

Marie-Ange has a routine. Everytime she gets a new deck it takes a little time to grow accustomed to them and for them to accept her. Each of them has their own personality and she often chooses the deck specifically for the situation or the question.

The Tarot of Marseille is an old favourite but it can be helpful to get a second opinion or even, such as the Lotéria deck, a wider choice of objects to animate, and when she had seen this deck for sale it had called to her and she knew she had to get it.

She sets all her decks out on the table and selects a minor arcana, or similarly inanimate object, to summon from each. She never chooses swords, but wands, coins or pentacles, and cups are all easy enough, or even the particular Swiss suits, bells, roses, shields and acorns, and usually the ace is the safest option but it amuses her to draw La Pera from the Lotéria deck, and eat the pear while she continues.

After animating these simple items, Marie-Ange turns to something a little harder. For most decks Temperance is an easy choice, with nothing more dangerous than two vessels for water, but she has to watch out for incidental images. The Thoth deck's version—Art—includes a lion and an eagle and she doesn't want to call on more than she can manage. For the Lotéria cards, La Araña gives her a little challenge but she isn't afraid of spiders and besides, she's never going to be allowed to forget the time she choose El Cotorro and the parrot escaped her room and flew around the school until Haroum caught up with it.

Finally, she takes the new deck, shuffles her cards, and starts with a simple five card spread. Sometimes it takes a few reads to get used to what a new deck is telling her, all of them seem to have their own leaning. She focuses, takes a deep breath and then deals out five cards. One for the Past, one for the Present, and one for the Future, in a row straight across, one for Reason—above and finally one for Potential—below.

The card she draws for Past is where she usually starts to get her first feel for the deck; learns if it will be direct, or a more cryptic reference. Marie-Ange knew her past, had come to terms with it, but the cards could still carry a message for her by how they referenced it.

She turns the card over - World. That isn't a surprising pick, when she's half-way across the world from where she was born, more direct than some of her decks, but she will still have to see if there's a deeper meaning when considered with the rest of the spread.

The Present is another one which could guide her into interpreting the rest of the draw and here she turns over the High Priestess. Another direct call, which could be referencing Miss Frost or might simply be herself, a reference to her own intuition, but she knows by now that the tarot are more subtle than that. If they were being so obvious, then they probably weren't being obvious at all.

Marie-Ange knows Death isn’t as simple a message as it looks but it is still worrying that she can’t seem to draw anything else for the Future position whichever deck she uses and especially with this draw which has been very literal so far. Obviously it could just mean a major change but should she be worried about someone actually dying? If so, who? And how? Their rivalry with the New Mutants seems to have faded and presumably it's something she can do something to prevent rather than a random accident for it to keep coming up.

She moves on. She tends to find Reason even more opaque than the other cards but with such an apparently candid deck it's hard to know what to expect. What she gets is the King of Wands reversed, which this is the first time she has drawn a court card into the Reason position. With how literal everything else has been, she suspects this too refers to an actual person but who? Magneto? Sebastian Shaw? Impulsiveness, haste, ruthlessness; those qualities could easily describe any number of men in the Hellfire Club ranks.

She almost dreads drawing the final card, Potential can be the best possible result out of a situation, or it can be the worst. It is almost a relief to place it down and see the Wheel of Fortune. It could refer to Jenny, but Marie-Ange can’t help her mind drifting to another meaning, Karma. The New Mutant had been friendlier to Marie-Ange than her companions, their shared language making it her comfortable to be around and she would have liked to get to know her better. Still Marie-Ange wasn't entirely sure where Xi'an fitted into the picture the cards were drawing for her here.

Although less symbolic, it wasn't such a different reading to the last one she had drawn with her Marseille deck but there was still room to interpret what message the cards were trying to send her. Did the World or the High Priestess represent the past and present of the forthcoming threat rather than her own situation at all? Miss Frost certainly had enough enemies who might want to try and kill her.

Or perhaps, since the cards had made her think of Xi'an, the warning wasn't for her at all. The X-Men had recently returned from Australia, had they not? The High Priestess could easily represent one of theirs. So should she pass on the warning? Miss Frost surely wouldn't notice the charge on the phone bill.

Marie-Ange has the Westchester number hidden in the back of a drawer where no-one can judge her for it. She's certain Miss Frost knows but their teacher has never given her any indication that she's unhappy about her burgeoning friendship with the New Mutant.

Usually Marie-Ange got a sense of when her interpretation of the cards was the right one, sometimes even a physical sign. She hasn't felt that for weeks now, the usually fathomable future suddenly unclear, but now the rising sense of excitement tells her she's on the right track.

She makes the call.


End file.
